British horror
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Featured:  Illustration: Portrait fantaisiste du marquis de Sade (1866) by H. Biberstein |
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Gothic fiction
Gothic fiction was a popular 18th century literary genre that began in England with The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole. It depended for its effect on the pleasing terror it induced in the reader, a new extension of literary pleasures that has been a precursor to the dark variety of Romanticism.
Prominent features of gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, secrets and hereditary curses.
The stock characters of gothic fiction include tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, revenants, ghosts, perambulating skeletons, the Wandering Jew and the Devil himself.
Important ideas concerning and regarding the Gothic include: Anti-Catholicism, especially criticism of Roman Catholic excesses such as the Inquisition (in southern European countries such as Italy and Spain); romanticism of an ancient Medieval past; melodrama; and parody (including self-parody).
Penny dreadfuls
A penny dreadful (also called penny horrible, penny awful, penny number and penny blood) was a type of British fiction publication in the 19th century that usually featured lurid serial stories appearing in parts over a number of weeks, each part costing a penny. The term, however, soon came to encompass a variety of publications that featured cheap sensational fiction, such as story papers and booklet "libraries." The penny dreadfuls were printed on cheap pulp paper and were aimed primarily at working class adolescents, primarily at teenage boys from the working class, though there is some evidence that many girls read them as well.
Film
Less restrictive censorship towards the end of the 1950s encouraged B-movie producer Hammer Films to embark on their series of influential and wildly successful horror films. Beginning with black and white adaptations of Nigel Kneale's BBC science fiction serials The Quatermass Experiment (1955) and Quatermass II (1957), Hammer quickly graduated to deceptively lavish colour versions of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy. Their enormous commercial success encouraged them to turn out sequel after sequel, and led to an explosion in horror film production in the UK that would last for nearly two decades. Hammer would dominate British horror production throughout this period, but other companies were created specifically to meet the new demand, including Amicus Productions and Tigon British.
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